Let's play Commander Keen

aww. well I will try and find that version. thanks

I can confirm what Oet says about 1.4 keen6.exe (1.4) loads and works.

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Thank you so much @Oet for bringing one of my favorite childhood games to Gameshell.

If there was a way of running other classic apogee titles such as ā€œSecret Agentā€ and ā€œBio Menaceā€ natively, my life would be complete. :slight_smile:

Developers like @Gerhard_Stein and Caitlin Shaw make that possible.

I have not found an open source clone of ā€œSecret Agent Samā€ or ā€œBio Menaceā€, but managed to get Open Crystal Caves running if I remember correctly.

Hopefully someone could make CommanderGenius support Bio Menace one day. The engine is pretty similar I guess.

If you got Crystal Caves running on the Gameshell, a write-up of the steps like you did here would be awesome!

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Seems I never tried. The documentation of Open Crystal Caves says it misses a lot of features, like enemies, shooting, and entering levels. Is it really worth it? :slight_smile:

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Iā€™m having the same issue, followed the instructions above and I get a black screen then back to the menu. I also cannot see .CommanderGenius in the /home location, yet if I try to copy it there again it asks me if I want to replace the filesā€¦

Iā€™m completely fresh to this, so I have no idea what to do.

Same issue as what?

The directory .CommanderGenius should be in /home/cpi. Not in /home.

You probably used some tool to transfer the files, but still need to set executable rights:

chmod +x /home/cpi/games/CommanderGenius/CommanderGenius

Let us know the result.

(Apart from this solution, I might release a new version of Commander Genius for the GameShell soon. People have been working on newer versions of the ClockworkPi image and Commander Genius.)

Hey there, thank you for responding. I thought my reply would come under the comment I replied to.
I did have the .CommanderGenius file in the correct location and that code you gave me did allow the program to startup.

Keen 1,2,3 + 5 work seamlessly, however Keen 4 crashes the app after I select it from the list. I added the steam version of the game into /home/cpi/games/CommanderGenius/ as Oet described, renaming them to Keen 1 etc and removing the capture and zmbv files. the keen 4 icon shows in the list, it just fails to load the game.

I want to thank you for your help. Keen 4-6 are my favorite games of all time, and I purchased my GameShell with the hope that these games would run. I would welcome a new version openly, and I applaud your work on CommanderGenius. I have been using it since I found it on Android several years ago.

Youā€™re doing Godā€™s work. :slight_smile:

You can boot the program through the console:

DISPLAY=:0 /home/cpi/games/CommanderGenius/CommanderGenius

The console will give you the error when you let Keen 4 crash. Maybe we can fix it.

Give credits to @Gerhard_Stein :). I just try to make people run games (including his work on Commander Genius) on the GameShell as easy as possible.

Well, @Gerhard_Stein I love you too.

A Segementation fault is the hardest. Donā€™t think I can solve that fast. My best guess would be the program has an audio bug.

So, I tried to make a newer GameShell release. However, CG seems to have another bug which prohibits me from entering the movement key menu without a mouse.

I will report this bug. People will want this option with the GameShell. :confused:

I will do my best to help you. I can pass more messages in order to see which part of the audio code crashes. It is a bug in the audio code for sure.

Hi, checkout my latest master branch. I have added more messages so you can narrow down that error much better. Can I reproduce this error with some raspbian maybe running on raspberry pi 3 or 4?

The movement key menu is fixed, so thanks @Gerhard_Stein.

However, I have a new bug in the ā€˜No games detected!ā€™ menu which keeps me from releasing a new GameShell version for @Chris_Sullivan and others.

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Yes, a chicken or the egg dilemma. Just got it fixed.

Thx. I think a new release for the GameShell is now possible.

Although, some sea monster might not work properly yet. :wink:

Need some time to make the new release anyway, because of the coming working week.

@Chris_Sullivan I released CG v.2.4.2 for the GameShell. I hope you use the latest Clockwork OS. There are some bugs here and there, but I hope this version might solve your issues or at least, debug better.

Thank you, I havenā€™t had an opportunity to try this yet, it might have to wait until the weekend, but I look forward to it and will report back when Iā€™m done.